Corporations with well known brand names have a major advantage in the selling of services. One example of the use of this type of advantage is in mobile virtual network operations. A company such as Walmart while having no basic interest in establishing the infrastructure of a mobile telecommunications network would still like to take advantage of the power of its brand to sell mobile telecommunications services.
In one popular mobile virtual network operation business model, the mobile network operator (service provider) teams with a reseller. The reseller approaches customers or is approached by the customers to obtain mobile telecommunications service.
The reseller then notifies the service provider of the identity of the customer and for prepaid customers the type of prepaid arrangement requested by the customer. In prepaid services a customer pays a service provider a fee and the service provider then provides service charging the customer against the pre-provided fee. The end users—wireless prepaid subscribers—pay the reseller for the services. The reseller pays the service provider for wireless infrastructure and customer account management. The reseller owns a customer care center (help desk) which uses software provided by the service provider. When the subscriber calls the help desk, the reseller representative will use the customer care system software to obtain the needed information and update the account information. As the customer makes calls, the charges for the calls are subtracted from a record of the prepaid fee until the customer has exhausted the fee and is asked to provide an additional fee for more service. The fee is usually paid to the reseller through a credit or debit card arrangement, cash, or through some kind of bank transfer arrangement.
The fee is provided to the reseller and the service provider accumulates agreed upon charges against the reseller. Periodically, or according to some other arrangement, the reseller pays the service provider for the services provided.
Since it is the reseller who collects money from the customers and since it is the service provider who collects money from the reseller, a problem of the prior art is that there is no satisfactory arrangement to punish a reseller who does not pay the service provider.